Improvement by Joan Silber; Counterpoint, 2017. 227 pages; $26.00 (hardcover); reading level: adult. Part I of this three-part novel dangles the prospect that this will be an intriguing but straightforward story. It’s 2012 and Reyna, living in Brooklyn and the single mother of a four-year-old, narrates. We meet Aunt Kiki, Reyna’s boyfriend Boyd and, after… [Read More]
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
April 24, 2019 By
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders; Random House, 2017. 343 pages; $17.00 (paperback); reading level: adult. Set in February of 1862, in a very real cemetery where the very real body of Willie Lincoln has just been placed in a borrowed crypt by his bereaved father, the first character we meet is a very… [Read More]
The Mayor of Mogadishu by Andrew Harding Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
March 21, 2019 By
The Mayor of Mogadishu; A Story of Chaos and Redemption in the Ruins of Somalia by Andrew Harding; St. Martin’s Press, 2016. 278 pages; $26.99 (hardcover); reading level: adult. As Harding admits in his introduction, this is both a biography of Mohamud “Tarzan” Nur (mayor of Mogadishu, Somalia from 2010 to 2014) and a recounting… [Read More]
The Professor and the Mad Man by Simon Winchester Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
January 9, 2019 By
The Professor and the Madman; A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester; HarperCollins, 1999. 242 pages; $15.99 (paperback); reading level: adult. In 1634, the French established the Académie Française to catalogue, and keep a watchful eye on, their language. It wasn’t until 1857 that Richard Chenevix… [Read More]
Cyrus Field’s Big Dream; The Daring Effort to Lay the First Transatlantic Telegraph Cable by Mary Morton Cowan Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
November 4, 2018 By
Cyrus Field’s Big Dream; The Daring Effort to Lay the First Transatlantic Telegraph Cable by Mary Morton Cowan; Calkins Creek, 2018. 224 pages; $19.95 (hardcover); reading level: grades 4-12. Cyrus Field didn’t know the first thing about telegraphs when he retired from running a successful paper mill in 1853. But when his “big dream” took hold,… [Read More]
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
June 1, 2018 By
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu; and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer; Simon & Schuster, 2016. 279 pages (hardcover); reading level: adult. Hammer has to lay a lot of groundwork before he gets to the “bad-ass” rescue promised in the title. He puts events a relatively well-informed reader might… [Read More]
They May Not Mean To, But They Do by Cathleen Schine Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
May 17, 2018 By
They May Not Mean To, But They Do by Cathleen Schine. Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. 290 pages; $26.00 (hardcover); reading level: adult. Only a seasoned writer could have pulled this one off: As I read Schine’s clear-eyed novel, I laughed and cried at the same time. I cried with the protagonist, eighty-six-year-old… [Read More]
Bellevue by David Oshinsky Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
May 10, 2018 By
Bellevue; Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital by David Oshinsky; Doubleday, 2016. 387 pages; $30.00 (hardcover); reading level: adult. As the subtitle promises, this history of New York City’s oldest public hospital is far from dry. Following Bellevue from its beginnings as an almshouse established in the early 1700s to… [Read More]
On My Reading List – September 2018 through June 2019…
February 12, 2018 By
Early each year I pick out the books I’ll be reading with my Book Discussion Group for the coming year. We read nine books from September through June, three nonfiction and six fiction. After reading reviews, getting opinions from readers I trust, and scanning classics I might have missed, here are the titles I’ve come… [Read More]
Idaho by Emily Ruskovich Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
December 20, 2017 By
Idaho by Emily Ruskovich; Random House, 2017. 308 pages; $27.00 (hardcover); reading level: adult. The central act of Ruskovich’s graceful first novel – the murder, on an Idaho mountain, of 6-year-old May by her mother, Jenny – has already taken place when we begin reading. We are haunted by two questions: Why did Jenny (who… [Read More]